A severe lesson

It is good to know that Littlehampton Town Council has expressed its dissatisfaction with the hype concerning the North Littlehampton development (Gazette, January 8).

Having been somewhat involved in the opposition to the plans for the Eden Park estate (Arun Policy Site 7), which similarly used up valuable food-producing land, I am not surprised at the shortcomings so obvious in the published details of the proposed major development between Toddington and the Black Ditch.

Lessons which should have been learned from the Eden Park layout include the inadequate width of some estate roads. The developers themselves, at a public meeting, admitted they would be too narrow for buses to use!

A related matter, of sufficient provision of off-street parking, has also been ignored in the latest plans – another severe lesson that would be obvious to anyone visiting Eden Park, where private garages are too few and where vehicles are extensively stored on narrow ‘highways’, reducing the available road space for passing traffic – which has itself dramatically increased in the past few years.

One would hope that the developers would consider such matters at the design stage, but it seems that the same sort of problems are going to arise at the new estate – but on a much larger scale.

Can we rely on Arun’s planners to insist on an estate being built with really adequate infrastructure, in view of the council’s apparent lack of interest in the past to put the community at the head of its list? If they accept low standards for the first phase of any new scheme, are we likely to see an improvement at later stages, or will the general appearance of a housing settlement be that of a second-hand car lot?